Consumer Electronics

New HMI for BrauEule III Microbrewery

For the BRUMAS microbrewery, BrauEule III, we developed an intuitive HMI with a new underlying control system. Additionally, some new innovative features have been implemented, which make BrauEule III one of the best microbreweries available in this market segment.

The Challenge

Since 2003, BRUMAS has been convincing consumers with its high-quality automatic microbreweries called BrauEule®. Beginners as well as experts value the possibility of choosing between the “auto” or “custom” brewing programs, which makes the brewery suitable for every knowledge level.

Brumas decided to innovate BrauEule by giving it a completely new touch-controlled display unit. Within this scope, a completely new control system needed to be developed to run on a new hardware. Additionally, Brumas wished to introduce two brand-new features: The first one is the integrated recipe book, to make brewing different types of beer easier by simply following the instructions on the display. The second one is the control of the fermentation process taking place in the connected refrigerator.

Brumas chose TARA Systems’ GUI Services and Embedded Wizard as a GUI technology.

The Solution

Designing an intuitive and modern user interface is a job for professionals. In this case, we started by getting Shapefield, one of our UX design partners, on board.

To understand the whole operating principle of BrauEule, we arranged a creative workshop with all involved parties, where we discussed the process flow of beer brewing and all UX related aspects. Furthermore, we even brewed beer ourselves in order to better understand the fundamentals of the beer brewing process.

After the mock-ups and when the visual design by Shapefield had been approved by Brumas, we started the implementation work. To accelerate the process, we developed the control system and the GUI implementation simultaneously, which was feasible due to our GUI tool Embedded Wizard. Thanks to the possibility of prototyping on Windows, we could ensure ongoing testing of the complete software at every development stage, even before the hardware related part was completed. In order to rule out the possibility of misinterpretations, we stayed in continuous contact with Brumas throughout the entire development period.

Four months later the underlying control software as well as the GUI developments were finalized and the new BrauEule III was ready to be introduced to the market.

The Result

Thanks to the excellent cooperation and the commitment of all involved parties, a huge upgrade of the product was achieved. The modernized BrauEule III now has a new color touch display with a completely new user interface and control system, which lift the usability and user experience to a new level. It is the only product available in this market segment with an integrated recipe book and intuitive user guidance. Moreover, the fermentation process taking place in the refrigerator can now be controlled as a parallel process, which allows the user to start a new brewing process at the same time.

In November 2016, BrauEule was presented at BrauBeviale, a capital goods exhibition for the beverage industry, where it was a big success. BrauEule got a very positive response from the fair attendants and some of them even placed an order instantly. In particular, the intuitive handling, guided brewing process, simultaneous control of two processes and integrated recipe book enthralled the visitors. This confirms our conviction that the new user interface worked out to be really logical, understandable and intuitive, which makes the product as a whole even more attractive for the end user.

The new BrauEule has been launched on the market in Q1 2017.

The whole design process was managed professionally from the beginning. The focus was set to the right issues. Work was efficient so every milestone was met right on the tight timeline. For me the result is an extremely good user interface, beautiful design and costs within the budget. Seeing the finished product I am sure I did the right thing choosing TARA Systems as a partner.

It was important for me that the partner responsible for programming understands the practical issues of beer brewing. This criteria was met by TARA Systems. Several brews were performed as part of the program development and helped making the right routines in the program code. Cooperation was at a friendly but always professional level. TARA was extremely supportive - despite scarce resources. Special thanks to Alex, Rudi and Ludwig!